L.A. Has Potential to Be a Leader on Biotech Industry Cutting Edge
Despite its world-class academic talent and role in inventing the Internet, the Los Angeles area economy has been unable to grab much of a piece of the digital revolution of the last 15 years. But recent advances on the biomedical front offer the region another opportunity to leverage its all-star scientific talent in an emerging industry.
Exploration of the human genome is accelerating growth of a specialized business called bioinformatics, which unites microbiology with the power of supercomputers to dissect the most basic components of life. The Los Angeles area already has earned a place in this white-hot field. Discoveries made years ago at Caltech and USC laid the groundwork for the historic mapping of the human genome.
Business-minded scientists in San Diego, the Bay Area and a handful of other biomedical centers have been quicker to commercialize the new technology, but the field is so new and evolving so rapidly that the Los Angeles area, ranked nationally in the top five in biotechnology overall, still has time to assume a leadership role in the increasingly important niche.
“We have the talent and there is a need,” said UCLA assistant professor Chris Lee, head of the university’s 2-year-old graduate-level bioinformatics program. “We have a combination of skill sets not easily found everywhere.”
Bioinformatics uses complex mathematical formulas and computers to analyze vast amounts of biological data. The technology enables scientists to study specific genes and their relation to disease. Using these tools, researchers also are beginning to read genetic instructions for the tens of thousands of human proteins that also can cause illness.
Beyond that, scientists are using bioinformatics to learn the genetic makeup of plants, animals and bacteria.
A 6-month-old Caltech spinoff is working with a chemical company to determine the protein structure of a specific bacteria. Such information could lead to creation of a strain that “eats” chemical waste with gusto, said Bionomix President and Chief Executive Derek Debe, a 27-year-old former graduate student.
Many believe that the technology will lead to drugs designed for specific people based on their genetic makeup. One reason for drug side effects, experts say, is that medications that take aim at harmful proteins also attack similar proteins that aren’t causing trouble.
Besides yielding a treasure-trove of data, bioinformatics could be a financial bonanza to small companies (and their university partners) that patent the discoveries. Companies able to leverage their data into drug design stand to reap larger rewards.
In addition to its reservoir of talent, there are other reasons to believe that the Los Angeles area can succeed as a bioinformatics center. Unlike the biopharmaceutical business, the new specialty doesn’t require large pools of trained technical support and manufacturing workers, which the Los Angeles area lacks. There are start-ups in the Los Angeles area doing cutting-edge work with high-speed computers and less than a dozen employees.
“You can’t put a biotechnology company in San Bernardino,” said Pavel Pevzner, a former USC researcher. “You can put a bioinformatics company there.”
A proposed $20-million bioscience center in Pasadena is an attempt to jump-start the industry by tapping into resources at Caltech and City of Hope, a research-driven medical center in Duarte. The center, to be located within a proposed 100-acre biomedical zone, would include an incubator for bioinformatics start-ups. The Cal State University center also would be a regional training site for undergraduates and would incubate traditional biotech companies.
But institutions elsewhere also see the potential of bioinformatics, which promises to revolutionize medicine. Virginia’s George Mason University and the University of Florida at Gainesville recently established bioinformatics programs with incubators. Growth in the Bay Area is in part fueled by research at UC Berkeley, Stanford University and UC Santa Cruz, which has one of the most respected bioinformatics programs in the nation.
Closer to home, UC San Diego, which has a strong record of producing spinoff companies, has launched a bioinformatics program headed by Pevzner, who worked at USC alongside the co-inventor of the mathematical formula used to decipher the human genome. The Pasadena center hasn’t been approved and is at best three years from opening.
The potential payoff of these investments isn’t known. Wall Street analysts and biomedical consultants have estimated revenue from bioinformatics in the $2-billion to $7-billion range. Such a business can support only a few large players. That is one reason why pure bioinformatics companies, such as Celera Genomics Corp. of Rockville, Md., are transitioning into drug design from genetic information companies. Celera, the public company that mapped the genome, is developing diagnostics for cancer and other diseases, where the big money is.
Still, some scientists and investors believe that bioinformatics is potentially a much bigger business. The human genome could trigger production of as many as 100,000 proteins, most of which are unknown and interact in potentially complex ways. This will create a need for vast amounts of information. Moreover, the development of drugs designed to treat people with specific gene types will expand the field of bioinformatics into physicians’ offices, Lee said, where skilled workers will need high-tech devices to read each patient’s genetic code.
“The applications are enormous,” Lee said.
It will take more than training programs to capitalize on the Los Angeles area’s bioinformatics talent.
The region still must turn the heads of venture capitalists who are excited by bioinformatics but are more comfortable with investments in biomedical hotbeds such as the Bay Area and San Diego.
The Los Angeles area lacks a network of nonscientific professionals skilled in the nuances of biotechnology, experts say. UCLA scientist David Eisenberg, co-founder of Los Angeles bioinformatics firm Protein Pathways, found his general counsel and patent attorney in the Bay Area, which nationwide ranks second to the Boston-Cambridge area in biotechnology. San Diego ranks third, with the Los Angeles area, mostly on the strength of Thousand Oaks-based Amgen, vying with the Baltimore-Washington area for fourth. “There are huge infrastructure issues,” Eisenberg said.
Few believe that the Los Angeles area will rival the state’s biotechnology centers overall. With careful planning, the region can develop as a bioinformatics center that provides good-paying jobs for skilled technicians in a research-driven, and thus, largely recession-resistant industry.
“You can argue that there is already a critical mass in San Diego and San Francisco, and why have another area?” said William A. Goddard III, a Caltech chemistry professor on the board of Bionomix. “We have an abundance of people here on the high end, and what we are trying to do is get the middle spectrum in place.”
